The Shadow of the Past Part 40

With the moment of departure it occurred to him what a fool he had been to come. He did not know what he had expected from the visit. It had proved a wild, impossible venture. A man may not take the law into his own hands even in Africa. Had he killed Holman he would have found himself placed in an awkward dilemma. It would not have been easy to establish a sufficient reason for the act. He had nothing but circ.u.mstantial evidence to produce against Holman, evidence which would have implicated Honor, and which therefore he could not have made use of. He realised clearly that he had been actuated by a strong personal animus, the result of his recognition of the man's responsibility for the poisoning of Honor's mind, and the systematic fostering of her brother's disloyalty. It had never been with him a question of German treachery against England, but of the injury done to himself through the woman he had loved His sense of justice had not sprung from any lofty motive; therefore its failure of accomplishment, though humiliating, was not deserving of many regrets.

He climbed into the spider with difficulty and seated himself beside b.u.t.ter Tom, who, by dint of a vigorous application of the whip, induced the stubborn horse to break into an uncomfortable trot.

"This horse bad schelm," the Kaffir observed critically. "Him got seven debels in him."

Matheson looked back towards the rondavel, remembering now that they were moving the few things he had brought with him and which he had forgotten to pack. He was about to tell the Kaffir to return in order to fetch his possessions when he became aware of Leentje Nel's figure in the distance, running towards them, and changed his mind. The Dutchwoman gesticulated violently, and shouted to b.u.t.ter Tom to stop.

b.u.t.ter Tom heard her, and looked back; then, with his whip arm upraised, he glanced inquiringly at the baas' imperturbable face.

"Drive on," Matheson commanded.

The whip fell relentlessly across the animal's lean flanks. b.u.t.ter Tom stood up to the business, and narrowly escaped being thrown out on to the veld as the horse, after an indignant plunge and two ineffectual attempts to splinter the splashboard with its hoofs, broke into a furious gallop, b.u.mping the spider behind it like a toy cart over the rough stony ground. Matheson, hanging on with his left hand, watched, with a light of understanding for Honor's urgency breaking in upon him, Leentje Nel's pursuing figure pounding after them in futile and angry chase.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

The dark cloud which had so long overshadowed South Africa, which stretched now blacker than it had ever appeared across the sky of the Union's prosperity, was none the less surely pa.s.sing, rolling backward with sullen reluctance before the strong opposing breath of leading opinion.

This German organised rebellion owed its defeat largely to the fact that the Dutch in the Colony knew by experience how little reliance was to be placed in German promises. The Boer is beginning to recognise that the word of a German is binding only in as far as it serves his own end.

The memories of men who fought in the late Boer war are not all as conveniently short as their German advisers hoped. Brand, in his historical letter to de Wet, emphasised this point in his reply to de Wet's earnest exhortation to him to depart from the policy he had adopted and join the rebellion, which he insisted arose out of a spirit of deep indignation at the unholy act of the Government in attacking German South-West Africa.

"I am satisfied," Colonel Brand wrote in reply, "of the justice of the standpoint taken up by me. Even better than myself you know how deeply disappointed we were in the people whose case you so arduously espouse to-day. Not only did we receive no help from them in the last war, but the Kaiser even went to the extent of advising the British Government how to attack and destroy us. What an insult to our people when the late State President of the Transvaal personally applied to them and was turned back on the border."

These things are not easily forgotten, and they are less easily pardoned. The good faith of a nation cannot rest upon lies.

Matheson knew nothing of the letter Cornelius had written to his wife; but he gathered from what he heard in De Aar, and from the talk of some Dutchmen with whom he travelled to the coast, that the rebellion was half-hearted, that already the men were realising that they had been misguided and were forsaking their leaders and going quietly back to their farms. In a few months it was prophesied Botha would have crushed the rising and restored order in the country. And the men who were now so bitter against him would come to admit the wisdom of his policy, and respect him for the generous nature of his opposition, which followed consistently the principle of suppressing the rebellion with firmness, of sparing life when mercy could be judiciously extended, and of pardoning the offenders. It is possible only for great natures to be generous and for wise natures to be impartial. The Union was fortunate in its time of crisis in having at its head a man in whom both these qualities were combined. The quashing of their carefully planned schemes in South Africa was one of Germany's bitterest blows.

Matheson had sent a telegram to Brenda from De Aar to acquaint her of his return. He believed that she would be at the station to welcome him, nevertheless as an afterthought he had added the words: "Please meet train." A keen desire to see her welcoming face on the platform on his arrival moved him to send the message. He wanted her, as he always wanted her when he was depressed and out of tune with life. Her bright companionship and ready understanding of his moods, her unwearying patience and kindness, had taught him to lean unconsciously on her. He wanted her with the formless need of the individual for a tried human friendship which in no circ.u.mstance could fail in understanding and sympathy. He never a.n.a.lysed his feeling for her; but he knew that she had grown somehow very dear and necessary to him; he also knew that there was no sort of pa.s.sion in his steadily growing love for her. She was always his dear chum.

As he neared his destination a horrible feeling of nervousness gripped him. He was obsessed with the dread that something would prevent her from being at the station. She might not have received his telegram.

Such things had happened before. She might have been out when it arrived--it might have been stuck in the rack and forgotten. A dozen such possibilities occurred to him.

He stared out of the window at the gathering darkness, watching the black formless shapes flitting by like sinister shadows in the night, dimly illumined by the light of the pa.s.sing train. And then his gaze came back unwillingly, his musing interrupted by the bustle of his fellow travellers reaching up to the rack for their baggage in preparation for disentraining. Their cheerful energy fretted him. The journey had tired him, and his shoulder felt stiff and uncomfortable.

He still wore Honor's scarf as a sling. It was soiled now and crumpled, but it had been of great service. He glanced down at it and thought of the owner, of how she had tied it for him and pinned the empty sleeve of his coat across his breast, and b.u.t.toned the coat with great care for his injured arm. He pictured the beautiful face as it had leaned so near to him, and recalled the scent and the sheen of her bright hair.

All that belonged to the past--was a separate chapter in his life--a still-born romance. It was a dream of beauty which had no place in the world of realities. But the dream would live in his memory. In the gold and crimsons of the sunset, amid the vast solitariness of the veld, and the splendour of moonlit nights, he would dream the dream again, would see in imagination a woman's perfect face with its halo of pale hair shading the mystery of her eyes. She was becoming for him a symbol of womanhood, a symbol of all that was beautiful and strange and moving in nature. The flowers in the veld suggested her; the curve of a hill recalled the graceful flow of her shoulders; the heat of the noontide was as the pa.s.sionate warmth of her nature; while the remote serene dusk conveyed the remembrance of her gentler moods when she looked into the heart of Africa with pity for its unhealed wounds.

He gazed out again upon the darkness, and the picture of Honor faded.

The lights of the city became visible and the dark outline of the sea.

He sat up straighter and gripped the window with his left hand and peered out at familiar objects looming large in the gloom as the train ran on towards the terminus. Something one of the men in the carriage was saying arrested his attention. It recalled in a measure Herman Nel's theories in regard to the rising; only the speaker spoke with less restraint than Nel habitually used, and with less sympathy with the rebels.

"They boast that they are fighting for the independence of the old Republics," he was saying. "Perhaps a few of them are. But it is racial prejudice and political jealousy which has maddened the leaders.

And for the rest, rebellion is always an easy method of making a living."

A big fair Dutchman, standing in the middle of the swaying compartment, paused in the act of reaching up for a wonderful carpet bag which was serviceable rather than a thing of beauty, to remark with a slow shrug:

"Judas was not the only man to take blood-money. They come to a bad end, these men who sell human lives for greed."

Do they? Matheson felt that the speaker generalised over-freely. If Justice were always discriminating and inexorable in her dealings with malefactors, she worked too secretly for the ordinary man to follow her methods. It was altogether a fallacy in regard to this life that the wicked suffer and are punished in proportion to their offence.

The train ran into the station. He got out quickly. He had no baggage to concern himself with, and was one of the first to descend from the train. He searched the platform eagerly for Brenda; and when he caught sight of her and saw the light of welcome in her face, he realised how great his disappointment would have been had she failed him.

She came forward swiftly, a pleased shyness in her look, love for him shining behind the smiling gladness in her eyes. He stooped and kissed her. It was an unusual demonstration from him in public; but the sight of her welcoming face was good; it surprised him into a betrayal of greater tenderness than she was accustomed to from him. She drew him towards a lamp and scrutinised him attentively, and he saw her quick startled glance directed towards his empty sleeve, and felt unaccountably embarra.s.sed.

"It's nothing," he said jerkily in an attempt to rea.s.sure her. "I'll tell you about that some other time."

Her eyes lifted from the empty sleeve to his face.

"You look very tired," she said. "You've been ill... You _are_ ill."

He tucked his hand within her arm and led her outside the station.

"I got hurt," he said, "and I ought, I suppose, to be resting my arm, but it wasn't possible. It's nothing to worry about."

He put her into a cab and seated himself beside her.

"It's good to be back--with you," he said.

She pressed closer against him.

"I was surprised to get your telegram from De Aar. Why didn't you write from Johannesburg? ... All these days, and never a line!"

"I wasn't in Johannesburg," he answered. "I never got beyond De Aar.

The man I wanted was there. Do you remember the man you saw me with on the beach that first morning? ... I went to settle a debt with him."

She turned quickly towards him, a light of comprehension dawning in her eyes.

"He did this for you," she said, and touched the empty sleeve. "I don't want you to tell me," she added; and he judged from her voice and from her manner that this journey of his to De Aar with its ugly consequences was a.s.sociated in her mind with the story he had confided to her at the Monument before their engagement. She wanted him to realise that she trusted him.

"I've no secrets from you," he said.

"I know. But there are some things one understands without any need for discussing them. I think I guessed when you didn't wish me to see you off."

"I didn't suppose..." he began, and broke off and stared at her. "I met her," he confessed baldly; "but it wasn't a thing planned. I wanted to see the man. She is married to him; but I didn't know that when I went there."

Silence fell between them. It seemed to the man and to the girl, seated so still beside him, that the presence of this other and fairer woman intruded between them, was with them, listening to their disconnected talk.

"It's finished anyway," he said abruptly. "I'm glad you know."

He stole a look at her quiet face.

"There is a dark shadow," he went on presently, "that lies across this land--the shadow of discontent and racial prejudice. That will pa.s.s away eventually--from the minds of many it has pa.s.sed already. I have heard it described as the shadow of the past. Across the lives of numberless people some such shadow falls. They pa.s.s, these shadows."

She stretched out a hand and found his advanced to meet it. He pressed her fingers warmly.

"It isn't any sort of use to pretend that it hasn't mattered to me," he said; "but it belongs to the past now. I can look ahead to the future with a glad confidence... You aren't afraid to trust your future in my keeping?"

She looked up in his face with a smile lighting the earnest eyes, and answered simply:

"I've never been afraid of shadows, Guy... And I love you. Love and trust are inseparable."